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CURT KOLCUN HAS THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS. As vice president ofMicrosoft's Federal Division, he combines a knack fortechnology with a passion for helping government agencies pursuetheir missions.

Kolcun said his career in information technology came about byaccident while he was a forklift driver as a member of an Air Forcelogistical squad in 1979. 'I had a natural proclivity forusing technology and happened to be at a location that was goingthrough an automation process,' he said. 'I gotassigned to be the project lead.'

As it turned out, the project was a triumph and saved the AirForce several hundred thousand dollars. Kolcun was named the 21stAir Force Freight Traffic Specialist of the Year and flown to AirForce headquarters to give presentations to top leaders about theproject. His IT career in the military took off.

He left the Air Force four years later for a job as a systemsengineer in the private sector. In 1989, he joined Microsoft as asenior architectural engineer for federal business and was promotedto his current position last summer.

One of Kolcun's hurdles was convincing Microsoft andgovernment officials that it was possible to standardizeconfigurations.

'We heard it wouldn't be possible to define aconfiguration that could be consistently used across such a vastenterprise as the federal government,' Kolcun said.'This was an element that needed to be proven both internallyat Microsoft [and to government officials].' We had to workwith our product teams to make sure they understood what it wasthey were trying to do.'

On the government side, 'we had to make sure we could workcollaboratively with the government and demonstrate we could dothis in a way that wasn't self-serving and make sure that wecould facilitate meetings to whittle down and define these standardsettings'and demonstrate through our technology that [astandard configuration] could actually be deployed,' hesaid.

The FDCC effort has gone well. 'Agencies continue to moveforward and see results relative to both security and businessvalue,' he said.

Kolcun added that Microsoft's work with the governmentinvolves more than selling products.

'The biggest challenge is overcoming the desire to sell aproduct and actually listen and be a partner with government tomove things forward,' he said.

'Curt embodies everything you could possibly want in anindustry executive,' said Kim Nelson, executive director fore-government at Microsoft and former chief information officer ofthe Environmental Protection Agency. 'He served his countryas part of the Air Force, he has a long history of working in manydifferent customer-facing roles while driving increasingly largerorganizations, and he has great passion.'

That passion extends to charitable work that supports U.S.warfighters. He is a member of the executive committee of theUnited Services Organization of Metropolitan Washington and helpedestablish USO's Salute Our Troops program. Kolcun also ledMicrosoft's Above and Beyond Awards, which honor thecontributions of people who brighten the lives of U.S. troopsworldwide.